The Everton chairman, Bill Kenwright, has issued a statement confirming the club have rejected a transfer request from John Stones, adding the England defender is “not for sale”. Chelsea have already had three bids for Everton’s John Stones rejected. Chelsea have had three offers for the 21-year-old turned down so far and are expected to return with a bid totalling £40m before Tuesday’s transfer deadline.

A determined Martínez has been adamant throughout the saga of three bids from Chelsea, the last for £30 million, that the defender is not for sale and he is maintaining that position.

Martínez has long since railed against a situation which allows the transfer window and its fevered speculation to drag on for a whole month once teams have returned to competitive action.

Up and down the country every dressing room has similar situations,” he added.

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Today we’re announcing that after two years of helping people discover and share great news via this website we will be shutting down this service on June 30.

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We are working hard to give the new site a 'lift' which will bring you an even better product that will give you exclusive access to socially-vetted, high-quality news. The new product will give great content the engagement and social reach it deserves. It will also help creators to get trusted feedback about their content to truly understand what their audience is passionate about.